Victims Of Our Own Success

The Norwich success has been maintained with a comfortable position in mid table in the Premiership. Like us Norwich in their first promotion season changed their manager after a poor start.

They turned things around quickly under Paul Lambert and the rest as they say is history. Even losing their manager has done nothing to halt their secure position as they found another good man to take the helm.

What has that got to do with us, I hear you ask? Nothing except we as fans take note of how we have followed, a year behind, in their footsteps.

There though the similarity ends. Norwich had a squad that didn't need a lot of tinkering and improved quickly under the new regime to begin their success story.

We on the other hand had just come out of administration and had just been relegated. We had an extremely bare cupboard and did not have a clue what our new owners would be capable of doing to lift our club.

With Markus Liebher came a gentleman called Nicola Cortese. Once they had their feet under the table we saw a new manager arrive and players being brought in to bolster our squad.

Though we did well that season, and in head to head competition against Norwich. did very well by drawing at home, and winning away in the league. We failed after a late charge to reach the play-offs.

The next season again began poorly and we saw a change of manager with Nigel Adkins arriving. The rest we all know. Two great seasons with promotions and a place at the top table.

More players were brought in and even today we are bringing in more new faces as we struggle to come to terms with our success. The plan was to make it here in five years but we did it in three.

We have had to buy continuously to stay ahead of things and sometimes players need time to gel. Our first promotion came on the back of the goals scored mainly by Rickie Lambert, but with great assistance from Adam Lallana.

The second followed a similar path with their goals leading us forward. New faces came and went once we realized that there was a chance of making back to back promotions.

Even now we have squad members that had never played Championship football let alone sat at the top table before joining us. Where as Norwich had the core of their team we started our fight back with next to nothing.

We have done exceedingly well to reach where we are so quickly. We still have a hell of a hill to climb though if we are to reach the heights that we are aiming for.

We have to remember where we have escaped from, and give players the chance to learn when playing some classy opposition. Stop getting on players backs and roar even louder as we cheer them on.

We have far exceeded our wildest expectations so far so let us remember that and calm down when sometimes we do not produce the goods. We are still ahead of schedule.

J Rod, was very much supply and demand though sadly, so the fee was over rated. Others just haven't worked as hoped either by just not working or not getting the pitch time to show if they could. Will be interesting to see what Adkins does do in January, especially in terms of players leaving now he must have an idea of who can cope with this league now.